Recent Reading

Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism. This book is truly essential reading.

It proves, among other things, that the current state of disaster is all men’s fault.

Also: John Ruskin On the Pathetic Fallacy. According to his analysis, I am a poet of the second order (like Coleridge, Keats, and Tennyson!) and not of the first (like Dante or Homer — as if I didn’t know that!). At least I don’t have to hang out on the lowest rung with A. Pope (against whom I hold no grudge, actually, although it sure seems like Ruskin did).

I take some consolation in my position with these words of Ruskin’s:

The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose.

So, people, after you go and read Ruskin’s essay, or refer to your prior knowledge of it, tell me, do you or do you not believe that his distinctions, and his hierarchy, are still in place today?

Do you agree with them?

Are the distinctions in any way gendered, to your minds?

Or is there any way in which you think that they might reflect some sort of anti-pantheistic paradigm, Homer’s inclusion on the highest rung notwithstanding?

Do you honestly believe in a THING-IN-ITSELF??? or its “direct presentation”???

That’s the key question.